by Margie O’Rourke, AWC Dublin
At sixty-seven years of age, I couldn’t walk without both knees collapsing on me. My legs weren’t working, but my hands were, so I wrote a letter to my orthopedic surgeon. Yes, I have an orthopedic surgeon on dial-up, as my right hip was replaced years ago. I didn’t go outdoors for weeks for fear of dropping to the ground all together. Eventually, x-rays revealed that both knees were “bone on bone.” When I walked, my knee bones were grinding against each other, as the ligaments in the joints had disappeared. The only solution for me was knee replacements.
I was in the operating theater in Ireland within three weeks of writing my letter. Fortunately for me, there was nothing else medically wrong with me, so I qualified for double knee replacements. Just to be sure, the surgeon explained that he would replace one knee, wheel me out of the theater, make sure all vital signs were good, then wheel me back in for the second knee. I was unconscious for a total of eight hours.
And that was the easy part.
The day following my knee replacements was hard. I lay there with those tight white stockings for circulation as well as huge ice packets on both knees. Eventually, I was forced out of the hospital bed and made to walk with a walker. I was so nervous and astounded at just how hard a task it was. I pretty much had to learn how to walk again. For people having one knee replaced, they have the other knee to depend on. I had nothing but new steel knees that were telling me they really didn’t belong to me. My balance was also affected. It probably would have been easier to learn to walk with circus stilts. I spent one week in the hospital followed by two weeks in a rehabilitation center.
Upon arrival at the rehabilitation center, I was surprised and shocked at the number of staff members, both medical and housekeeping, who arrived in my room because they had never seen someone who had both knees done at the same time. The surgeon told me that when people need both knees done, one knee is done first, and most people never return to have the second knee replaced. In my case, I jumped right in and never looked back. I should say that I was eligible to have both knees done at the same time because there wasn’t anything else medically wrong with me. Fortunately, I was in great health and wasn’t on any medication.
And the surgery was also an easy part. The hard part in the rehabilitation center was the exercises and the long walks to and from the dining room. I initially thought that my meals would arrive in my room, just like in any hospital room. Oh no – the physiotherapist was having none of that. I remember when she came into my room on the first day; she said to me, “Tomorrow, you walk to the dining room.” My response was, “Oh no, I’ll have my meals in my room.” A woman much younger than myself, she looked at me and sternly repeated, “Tomorrow, you will walk to the dining room for all of your meals.” I quietly and reluctantly murmured, “Okay.”
Word must have spread quickly throughout the rehab center, because the next morning, as I finally stepped into the dining room, all heads turned. I was shown my seat at a table of eight other patients who had all had hip replacements. They all gasped, as they wanted to know if it was true that I had two knees done at the same time. I was suddenly the talk of the center. After meeting my meal mates for the first time, it was time to go back to my room. This was such a struggle, because I really had lost all sense of balance. I took my walker and slowly found my way out to the corridor. I hugged the walls with the side of my body, as I was quite frightened that I’d fall. What would have normally taken me about one minute – to get from the dining room to my room – took me about six minutes.
The hard part came when I visited the physiotherapist. She proceeded to show me the exercises I would have to do from here on in. I went off back to my room to do the exercises and stuck to the schedule without cheating. The next day at the physio room, I showed the therapist how I did the exercises. To correct the way I performed the exercises, she didn’t explain, but rather showed me, by pushing – and pushing hard – on my legs to get me to put them under the chair as far back as they could go. That was the first time I had experienced such pain that I cried and screamed much harder than when I had given birth to my two children. In fact, I don’t think I made any noise giving birth but I raised the roof in the physiotherapist’s room! Silly me, I was hoping if I screamed loud she would stop pushing my legs. She ignored me and kept pushing. And thank God she did, because I now live with two great knees.
After the two weeks in the rehabilitation hospital, I continued to do an hour’s worth of exercise daily at home for the next ten months. I joined a Facebook group called Bilateral Knee Replacement, and it was one of the best moves I made. The Facebook posts were informative, helpful and reassuring to me during my months of recovery. I also made a very good friend from the United States through the Facebook site, whom I eventually visited and still keep in touch with to this day.
There are no downfalls with my joint replacements except that the airport security alarms sound every time I go through those security frames. Oh yes, there is one downfall that I notice whenever I dance: To this day, I don’t have the rhythm in dancing that I used to have. My new knees can’t quite dance the way I used to. Saying that though, I can walk for many kilometers without stopping – but most importantly, without falling to the ground.
Photos courtesy of Margie O’Rourke